


regrets are colored blue

by pandabrite



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, blupjeans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 23:31:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13177524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandabrite/pseuds/pandabrite
Summary: barry has an emotional moment and lup tries to comfort him.





	regrets are colored blue

**Author's Note:**

> some sad stuff... based on something my husband and i talked about a while ago. there's some barry headcanon stuff here that belongs to tumblr user nickleerie-- just like the animus bell related things.

Lup didn’t need to sleep… but frequently she participated in what could only be described as recreational sleep by the other members of the IPRE who knew her. **  
**

It was a lazy Candlenights evening, and Barry and Lup, exhausted from the festivities, had found themselves a tangled mess in bed together, barely undressed from the celebration, nestled in a warm cocoon of blankets and limbs. The overhead lights were off, but they’d neglected to disengage the magic fairy lights that twinkled along the wall above where they rest.

The mood was serene and comfortable… or, at least, it was until Barry stirred from his sleep with a start.

Now, Lup was a quite heavy sleeper, but the feeling of her lover suddenly jostling around in her arms roused her quickly from her slumber. 

“B-barry, hey, Barry-- you good?”

Barry was breathing heavily, and with her keen, inhuman senses, she could feel his heart hammering, and with her very human sense of touch, she could feel his clammy skin…

“Hey--” She spoke again after receiving no response, and reached out to take Barry’s face in her hands, “shh… calm down, hey… I’m right here, what’s going on..?”

“Fuck--” Barry stuttered, finally seeming to find a pace of breathing that calmed his shakiness… he took a moment to watch Lup’s face through bleary vision, the concern written on her features, the softness of her eyes, the warmth of her soft fingers pressed into his face… he felt grounded, he felt calmer.

“Fuck…” He continued, “God, I’m sorry. Go… uh, go back to sleep, I’m sorry.”

Lup furrowed her brows, letting her fingers stroke along Barry’s cheeks, “You wanna talk about it..?”

“N-... Not really, no, sorry…” Barry’s response was a little short, and he had nestled his face against her chest as punctuation to the statement.

“Alright… Just… I’m right here, okay..?” Lup let her hands slide around behind his back, her chin resting atop his head. She wasn’t in the business of forcing anything out of him. She’d grown up with someone who talked when he needed to, so she’d always extended the same courtesy to Barry. He would talk about it if he needed to… and she trusted that she would know if she needed to force something out of him.

“I love you…” She mumbled, a whisper into his hair, a comforting, soft sound that filled Barry’s heart… God, no matter how many times he heard it… it caused his chest to tighten and his stomach to flip. It was so special… She was so special… and … he could have lost her forever.

The two fell into silence, though neither of them was asleep… Lup remained mum, gaze lingering on nothing in particular as she felt Barry’s breathing on her shirt, felt his back shift with his breathing. But Lup knew he was awake. She knew he was doing a lot of heavy thinking, as he sometimes tended to do…

She continued to rub his back, letting the quietness of the room wash over them, unwilling to disturb Barry as he worked through his emotions.

Suddenly, her senses were roused by a quiet voice against her chest, “... I coulda caused us to lose everything…”

Lup heard the bitter remorse in his voice clearly, and realized he… he must have had a nightmare, again. He had them from time to time, a stark reminder of the suffering that all of them went through to obtain this new life. 

“Oh, babe... “ She tightened her hold around him, drawing him as close as possible to her warmth, “you… listen, you didn’t… we all made it. We all kicked ass and we all survived…”

“Yeah but you didn’t see it, Lup,” Barry continued, still mumbled against her, “you didn’t see… fuck, you didn’t see what that Goddamn bell did. You… You didn’t see our family, our loved ones getting tortured by that fucking… my fucking…”

“Shh… shh…” She could hear the frustration and emotion mounting in his voice, “... let it out, okay..? Please…”

“Magnus could have been gone forever. They knocked his soul right out of his fucking body… they… Lup, I knew where it was the whole time, I saw them draw in hundreds of people… I saw them rip their souls out of their bodies… I saw… so many people suffer, but nothing was worse than watching Magnus, Merle and Taako, Lup… seeing them and desperately trying to help, almost losing them because of it…”

“I can’t imagine,” Lup mumbled, “I know… I know it had to fuckin’ suck, but… Barry, we did what we could with what we had… it happened, there’s no changing it now, but… we’re all fine.”

Barry was quiet for a long stretch, before he finally lifted his face from Lup’s chest and looked at her more directly, “I just--” he hesitated, “I… how could I make something like that? Something so… fuckin’ selfish, so fuckin’ diabolical…”

“You had your own personal reasons, just like we all did,” Lup spoke as soothingly as possible, a hand resting on his cheek, “... look, we… we all fucked up. We did. There’s… there’s no taking back the damage we did to this world… the people we hurt because of our own mistakes… but, Barry, we… we were all suffering. We were all desperate… this-- I… listen, I… you know I felt it too… the immeasurable guilt at the destruction, the death that not only my artifact caused but…

“Fuck, Barry, it was my idea,” she sighed, and after a pause and glance to the side to steel herself once more, she continued, “I… I was narrow sighted and desperate. We all just wanted to see this end… but…”

“I know, Lup, I know… I… I get that, it’s just... “ He trailed off-- how did he tell her that the Animus Bell had been the most selfish of all the Grand Relics… how did he tell her that he had created the bell with every intention of someday reclaiming it for himself..? How did he tell her that he didn’t want to lose his mortal form and only be able to exist with her, the love of his life, as a lich, while she lived on for seven hundred more years..?

“Shh…” Lup cooed again, watching Barry’s distracted and distraught face, “I know… there’s more to it than that. And… you can talk about that when you’re ready, okay? I… look, there isn’t one of us who’s perfect… We’ve all made mistakes and, yeah, we’ve all got to hold each other accountable for them, but accountability and beating yourself into the ground for a mistake are two different things.”

Barry sighed and let his head flop forward, back onto her breast. Lup coiled her arms around his neck once more and gave him a squeeze, maybe a little tighter than she needed to, “... We all carry guilt… we all messed up… we made mistakes and there’s no way that we can take them back now, but… Barry… dwelling on them and forgetting the good things that we’ve done, the brave fucking things we’ve done… they erase all the sacrifices we’ve made to end up here.

“We saved the world. We… we beat all odds and we saved all of those planes that would have just ceased to exist without us. We’re not perfect, we’re not saints, but we… we fuckin’... we earned this life. We fought tooth and nail for it, and we… we’ve gotta own it, Barry, the good and the bad…” 

Once again, Barry was silent. Lup let her speech fade into the quiet of the room as they both lay together… Lup didn’t know whether or not her words had helped, but… she knew she had to try. She would lift him up if she could, and if she couldn’t, then… she would just lay with him while he was down.

Her hands slid down and found his face again, and with a start they drew back a bit-- tears.

“Oh…” Was Lup’s only response as she drew back a bit, watching with inclined brows as tears slid down his cheeks.

She had no words, but Lup was a woman of action above all other things. She leaned forward, and with movements gentle as could be, she kissed away some of the tears with lingering, chaste touches.

After a time, she drew back, thumbs rubbing over his cheeks to wipe away his sadness, “... I’ll champion your sadness whenever you need me to… even with this, please remember you don’t have to fight alone… not ever again, okay..? I’m here for you. I love you.”

“... I… I know… I know, Lup…” 

“I’ll always be here.” Lup pulled him back into her embrace again. She knew there was nothing more she could do, so she would simply hold him for the rest of the night… there was nothing she wouldn’t do for him, to try and ease his pain, to try and heal wounds that he had-- they all had-- from the struggles that they all faced.

She’d fight any battle for him. 

Even battles she couldn’t win.


End file.
